


Howl

by dr_girlfriend



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Hawkeye Comic!Clint Barton, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr_girlfriend/pseuds/dr_girlfriend
Summary: Excerpt:Bucky gets that uncomfortable feeling again, like he missed something.  Lost time maybe.  It’s been happening less and less, but it still happens.“I don’t know what you mean.”The man runs a broad hand up the back of his neck, mouth pulling to the side as he seems to consider his words.“Skin feels too tight sometimes?  Feels like you gotta keep moving, but no place feels right?  Got an ache deep in your bones that you just can’t seem to get rid of?”“What —” Bucky swallows, the rest of the sentence jagged in his throat.  He knows there are Avengers who are witches, or telepaths, or whatever, but he’d never heard of Hawkeye being one of them.  “How are you — are youin my head? —”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 47
Kudos: 335
Collections: Winterhawk Wonderland - 2020 edition!





	Howl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mariana_oconnor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariana_oconnor/gifts).



> Huge thanks to kangofu_cb for the beta!

Bucky pulls in a deep breath, tugs the ballcap further down over his face, and enters the diner. The wave of scents washes over him — frying bacon and maple syrup, trucker sweat and damp work clothes.

It gets easier every time, but there’s still those first few moments of hypervigilance — flinching at every clink of silverware or sizzle of the grill, waiting for the buzz of conversation to die down and the screaming to begin.

It doesn’t happen. To the people in this town he’s just another scruffy-looking guy passing through, here for the blue plate special. 

He had already scoped out the corner booth from outside, and he keeps his pace slow and casual as he makes his way to it and then slides in, back to the wall. The menu is sticky with syrup residue, making the fingertips of the driving glove he keeps on his left hand tacky, and he frowns down at it, already making a mental note to clean it off before he touches the steering wheel. 

He has one of those moments where everything seems surreal. Three months ago he was half out of his head, still sloughing off decades of programming, eating out of dumpsters and handcuffing himself to radiators while he slept so he didn’t seek out his handlers in the dead of night. Now he’s the kind of guy who keeps baby wipes in the glovebox.

When he thinks about it that way, it feels like a lot of progress.

Someone comes up in his peripheral and he looks up with a practiced smile, ready to flirt some coffee out of the waitress. “I’ll have the waff —”

There’s a moment where his brain screams _Steve!_ before he processes that it’s a stranger sliding into the seat across from him. 

He’s as big as Steve — maybe even bigger. Blue eyes, blond hair, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Instead of Steve’s earnest, serious expression this guy looks faintly amused at everything, laugh lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. His nose looks like it’s been broken more than once and never quite reset right, and he’s got stubble on his cheeks and chin that makes Bucky think of the illustrations in those pulp fiction detective stories he used to read. Purple hearing aids are looped behind both ears, and he smells like fresh-mown grass and sawdust, mixed with a sharp alpine scent, and just a little like wet dog.

There’s a knife in Bucky’s hand that he doesn’t remember drawing, but he keeps it under the table for now. The stranger’s hands are resting, loose and open, on the red and white checkered laminate of the tabletop. He’s got big hands, and the scarred knuckles of a fighter, along with the kind of calluses most farmers around here have.

Neither of them look away as the waitress approaches, two coffee mugs in one hand and a steaming pot in the other.

She places one of the chipped cream-colored mugs in front of the stranger without asking, filling it up. 

She doesn’t even blink as the stranger knocks back the whole mug in three long swallows, not even letting it cool. She just leans over and refills it before he’s even done setting it down again, as if this is some routine they have going.

“Coffee for you, hon?” she asks Bucky and he nods. She’s chewing cinnamon gum, and the scent of it burns in his nostrils.

She puts the second mug in front of Bucky and fills it up. 

“You’re an angel, Agnes,” the man says. His voice is low and a little rough, like it’s the first time maybe he’s spoken today. “Kids doin’ okay?”

“They’re driving me crazy as ever, so I guess I can’t complain. Janey made flag corps.”

“Good for her,” the man rumbles. He hasn’t looked away from Bucky for a moment. “I saw her practicin’ in the parking lot the other day waitin’ for you to get off shift. The girl’s got talent.”

“Well, remember that when the popcorn fundraiser comes ‘round. State finals is in Cedar Rapids this year.”

“C’mon, you know I got a standin’ order for caramel corn,” the man says. “I put on 10 pounds gettin’ Danny to Eagle Scout alone. Now give us a minute, I gotta sing the praises of your pancakes to my buddy here before he does some damn fool thing like orderin’ waffles or somethin’.”

Agnes snorts but then tops up the man’s coffee and moves along.

They both wait until she’s out of earshot, just watching each other cautiously.

The man is the first to speak.

“You here ta kill me?” he asks. Strangely, he doesn’t sound too worried about it either way.

“I don’t even know who you are,” Bucky answers, surprised into the truth.

“Ouch,” the man says, in that same unbothered tone. “So, I’m supposed ta believe that the fearsome Winter Soldier just happened to wander through Waverly, Iowa —”

“— That’s not —” Bucky interrupts sharply, and then bites down on his tongue. He glances around, but no one seems to have taken any notice. “That’s _not who I am,”_ he hisses.

The man’s clear blue gaze sweeps up and down, making Bucky feel like he’s being x-rayed. He doesn’t know how it could be possible, but he could swear the man has even clocked the knife he’s got hidden under the table.

“Yeah. I heard somethin’ about that. But you can’t always believe everythin’ you hear.”

Bucky’s throat is dry, his heart pounding. He forces himself to sheathe the knife, wiping his sweaty palm on the thigh of his jeans before slowly bringing that hand up to join the other on the sticky tabletop. “I’m just grabbing a bite to eat and then I’ll be on my way.”

The man raises one sandy brow. “If you think you can use me to draw out the others, or that I’m gonna give anyone up, you can save us both the trouble an’ just kill me now. I’ll even follow you out to your car.” The man’s eyes flick to Agnes for a moment where she’s leaning over the counter to grab a bundle of silverware. “No bystanders.”

A shiver runs down Bucky’s spine as he realizes that the whole song-and-dance of small talk with Agnes had been for _his_ benefit. _She has kids,_ the man had been saying. _Whatever you’re here for, don’t start something in this place._

That this guy thinks he’s the kind of man who would _need_ a message like that — it makes his stomach churn a little. He knows — he _knows_ — that he did things like that in the past. But he’d slit his own throat before he’d do them again.

“I’m not — I wouldn’t —” He’s so fucking confused by everything that’s happening. His head still gets a little fuzzy sometimes, and he’s starting to wonder if he missed something big. Who are ‘the others’? “ _You_ came up to _me._ ”

“Well, I see trouble comin’ an’ I like ta try an’ get ahead of it.”

“I don’t want trouble,” Bucky rasps despairingly. “I don’t — I don’t want to kill anybody. Like I said, I don’t even —” 

The wave of coldness washes over him, pain splitting his skull. He swallows down bile, breathing shallowly through it, and when he looks up again the knowledge is just there.

“Clinton Francis Barton,” he says, his tongue thick in his mouth. “Hawkeye.”

The nickname certainly fits, the way the guy’s sky-blue eyes seem to bore right through Bucky.

The guy has an arm stretched out, although Bucky has no idea whether he was preparing to try to grab Bucky if he ran or prop him up if he fainted.

Instead the man just draws the hand slowly back, deliberately wrapping it around the coffee mug again, gaze still searching. 

“Huh,” he says after a moment. He leans back, the wrinkles in his brow clearing. “Guess you really _didn’t_ know.”

Bucky can only shake his head. The whole of fucking North America, and apparently he wandered into the one town outside of New York City where there’s another fucking _Avenger_. It’s the kind of luck that just seems to figure, after all.

The bell over the door jangles and Bucky’s head snaps in that direction, nostrils flaring as he scents the air. Just another soybean farmer. Red clover, a few chickens and goats. 

He turns back to the stranger — to Hawkeye. His mouth is open a little, his eyes wide.

“What?” Bucky snaps.

The man just snaps his mouth closed and shakes his head slowly. “Ohhhhh shiiiit,” he drawls, pinching the bridge of his nose like _Bucky_ is the one giving _him_ a headache. “Things just made a whole bunch more sense.”

Bucky gets that uncomfortable feeling again, like he missed something. Lost time maybe. It’s been happening less and less, but it still happens.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The man runs a broad hand up the back of his neck, mouth pulling to the side as he seems to consider his words.

“Skin feels too tight sometimes? Feels like you gotta keep moving, but no place feels right? Got an ache deep in your bones that you just can’t seem to get rid of?”

“What —” Bucky swallows, the rest of the sentence jagged in his throat. He knows there are Avengers who are witches, or telepaths, or whatever, but he’d never heard of _Hawkeye_ being one of them. “How are you — are you _in_ _my head?_ —”

For whatever reason the guy flinches at that. 

“No,” he says firmly, but it sounds like it’s coming from a distance, drowned out by the panic gibbering in the back of Bucky’s skull. _Not again_. 

“Listen to me.” The man’s intent voice cuts through the roaring in Bucky’s ears. _“Breathe,”_ he commands, and Bucky gasps in a shuddering breath. He realizes he’s trembling, knees knocking the table hard enough to set the sugar shaker rattling.

“Soldier,” the man says, and then more urgently, _“Bucky.”_ Bucky suddenly feels a hand against his cheek. “Look at me. That’s not it. Not that. _Never that_.”

The touch is startling, the man’s palm warm and callused against Bucky’s cheek. He tilts Bucky’s head up, capturing his eyes, and Bucky latches on, the calmness in the sky-blue gaze settling something in him, enough to process the words.

“You called me Bucky,” he repeats numbly, as air seems to trickle back into his calcified lungs.

“Yeah,” the guy says. His thumb traces a slow arc along Bucky’s cheekbone. The touch is gentle. _Tender_. “That okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky manages. His voice still sounds a little strangled, high and wavery.

“Keep breathing.” The thumb is still sweeping that slow arc, in time with the man’s deep, steady breaths. Bucky tries to keep pace, pulling a little more air in every time. His spinning head starts to steady. He can’t look away from the man’s eyes. He feels a little lost in them. They are so blue, so warm and concerned. Almost _familiar_ , even, along with the soothing grass and pine scent of him.

“Good,” the man says, finally dropping his hand back to the table. Bucky feels the loss of his touch acutely. When was the last time someone had touched him with anything approaching care?

“I’m Clint,” the guy says. “Sorry about the — I mean, I shoulda realized that —” He cuts himself off with a shrug, and then takes a big gulp of his coffee as if he’s trying to kickstart his brain with the jolt of caffeine.

“Anyway,” he finally says. “I got a friend like you. She told me what it felt like.”

 _“She?”_ He thought maybe Clint meant Steve at first, that this was something about the serum. What the hell _else_ is wrong with him? 

“I can’t figure out _what_ in the hell you’re talkin’ about,” Bucky says. The words come out more plaintive than he would have liked.

Clint’s eyes narrow. “Do you even know what you are?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

Bucky’s a lot of things. An ex-assassin. A brainwashed former prisoner of war. A coward, too afraid to see Steve again with the weight of all his sins pressing on his shoulders.

He looks out the window and swallows, not sure what Clint is even angling for.

Clint sighs, and when Bucky looks back he’s fishing out his wallet, leaving a couple of twenties on the table. 

“If you want to keep runnin’, feel free. But that feeling is just gonna keep gettin’ worse and worse. I’m goin’ over to the hardware store.” Clint nods across the street in the direction of a brightly striped awning that says ‘Waverly Home Supply.’ “My truck is the blue one, south end of the lot. Meet me there in an hour an’ I’ll make sure you get what you need.”

“What — how would you know what I need?”

“Like I said. Got a friend.” Clint stands up, shoving his wallet back into his pocket. He looks like he’s really going to leave. He’s an _Avenger_ , and he’s just going to let the Winter Soldier walk out of here?

“If you’re trying to arrest me you’re doing a piss-poor job of it,” Bucky says, mostly to gauge Clint’s reaction.

Clint just looks down at him, shoulders slumped a little. 

“I’m not tryin’ to _arrest_ you, dumbass, I’m tryin’ to _help_ you. Probably’ll do a piss-poor job of that too, but it never stops me from tryin’,” he says wearily.

He’s about to walk away but then turns back. _Here it comes_ , Bucky thinks. Here’s the catch, or the surprise attack. Here’s where he finds out Clint was just stalling him until the SWAT team arrives, or the Avengers descend from the sky in a quinjet.

“Get the pancakes,” Clint says. “They always burn the waffles.”

Then he’s gone, ambling down the center aisle and out the door, not looking back once. Bucky tracks him out the door and through the parking lot, watches him cross the street to the hardware store.

“You figure out what you’re havin’, hon?” Agnes asks at his elbow, startling him.

The pancakes are, in fact, delicious.

* * *

Clint doesn’t comment when he finds Bucky skulking around his truck in the parking lot — just loads his purchases in the back and then opens the passenger door for him before circling around to the driver’s side.

“We’ll come back for your car later,” Clint says. “Probably best if I show you everythin’ the first time.”

Bucky hesitates for a long minute, just to see what Clint will do if he doesn’t get in the truck. The answer is fiddle endlessly with the radio, apparently. He’s just about settled on a country music station by the time Bucky resignedly shoves his duffel bag in the back and gets in.

They drive in silence for a few minutes. It should make Bucky edgy as hell, but instead there’s something strangely soothing about it. Something about Clint’s quiet manner that makes him settle. 

Something almost … _familiar_ , he thinks again.

“Do I know you?” he finally asks.

Something flashes across Clint’s face, too quick for him to interpret.

“Can’t say as I recall meeting Bucky Barnes before,” Clint says, but there’s something evasive about it. When Bucky focuses he can hear his heart quicken just a little, smell the tang of sweat on his brow.

“You’re lying,” Bucky says, and to his surprise Clint just grins, wide and happy in a way that makes something hitch a little in Bucky’s chest. 

“Never can get anythin’ past my friend either. But don’t worry. Not so much lying as I am tryin’ not to give you more than you can handle right now. When you know what questions to ask, I’ll give you all the answers you want.”

Bucky tilts his head back on the headrest. _What the fuck does that even mean?_

“Why are you doing this?” he asks instead. “What’s in it for you?”

Clint seems to consider that for a long moment, his eyes scanning the road as if there’s anything out here but cornfields on both sides. “There’s a few different answers to that question. Easiest one is this — I owe Cap. I won’t even say I owe him my life, because god knows that ain’t worth a damn. But — whatever I have, I owe to Cap, and to hear him tell it he owes that to you, probably ten times over. That a good enough reason for now?”

“Are you gonna tell him I’m here?”

Clint’s eyes leave the road, searching Bucky’s face before looking back.

“Do you want me to?”

“I — I’m just — I’m not ready to —”

“— then I won’t,” Clint cuts in.

“Simple as that?” Bucky can’t help but push. If this man really owes Steve everything, then a few lies to Bucky are probably nothing. And yet Bucky can tell he’s not lying now.

“Simple as that.” Clint drums his fingers on the steering wheel a few times. “Can help you get a message to him, though, if you want. Untraceable. We both know it’s not gonna make him stop looking, but it might make him just a bit less reckless. You know, for a given value of Steve.”

Bucky snorts, caught by surprise. Yeah, this guy knows Steve alright. And that’s not a bad idea. He remembers the look on Steve’s face in that helicarrier, the way Steve was just going to let himself be killed. Bucky needs time, but he’s not trying to make Steve suffer.

“Yeah,” he says. “That — that sounds good.”

* * *

The place looks unassuming from the outside — too big for a shed and too small for a real barn, covered in the same weathered gray paint most farm outbuildings around here had. If Clint hadn’t talked Bucky through the multiple layers of security they had passed on the way, from the buried tire spikes to the well-hidden cameras with instant license plate identification and state-of-the-art facial recognition, he would have thought it was nothing special.

“Used to be a granary,” Clint explains, pulling up to the ragged gravel drive and getting out of the truck. “Someone fixed it up for living back in the 70’s, I guess. I’ve made...a few improvements since then.”

The front door looks pretty ordinary, painted metal with a square glass window in the center of the top half.

Clint fiddles with his phone for a minute, and then looks up.

“Put your palm against the glass,” he instructs. Bucky follows the direction, bracing himself for a shock maybe, but instead a warm red light sweeps up and then down again. He hears the grind of solid metal bolts drawing back, and then the click of the door lock opening.

“Programmed you in.” Clint reaches past Bucky and pushes the door open. Bucky is still standing there, dumbfounded, when Clint shrugs and sidles in the door ahead of him.

It’s absurd, is what it is. All these layers of security, and Clint is just handing it all over as nonchalantly as if it’s the keys to some beat-up jalopy.

Bucky shakes his head in disbelief, but follows Clint inside.

The place smells...Bucky doesn’t know how it smells. He likes it, but at the same time something about it bothers him. Jasmine and rosin, a hint of steel. It pulls at something in the back of his brain, and he blinks hard as the image of a young girl flashes before his eyes, her red hair flying in the wind.

“This your place?” he asks.

“It’s on my land, but my place is about a mile away. This was one of the original outbuildings. I own a dozen acres in either direction, though, so I’ll know if anyone’s comin’ long before they get here. It’s secure.”

It’s surprisingly homey. Mostly just one big area that he can see, a galley kitchen open to a living room with a couch and television. Lots of books scattered everywhere in a few different languages, and one of those old-fashioned record players set up on a table in the corner. The building extends further to the back — big enough for a bedroom and bathroom, probably, but not much more.

There’s a music box on the coffee table. Clint bumps it and it plays a few notes, nothing Bucky can place, but familiar all the same.

He breathes deep. Another not-quite-memory, like cool fingertips on the back of his neck.

“Your friend. She stays here?”

Clint looks up from where he had been half-heartedly straightening up some books scattered across the coffee table. 

“Got it in one. Sometimes she likes to be close, but not too close, y’know what I mean?”

Something about that sounds right. Bucky’s head is starting to hurt, and he rubs it a little, trying to put his thoughts in some kind of order.

“This friend of yours — do I know _her?”_

“That’s somethin’ you’d have to ask her about.” 

Another evasion. 

Clint heads for the kitchen, banging around in the cabinets, running the taps, as if to check that everything’s in working order. 

“Anyway, all the nonperishables are stocked, freezer too, but you’ll probably wanna make a grocery run or two for fresh stuff. There’s a farmer’s market every Saturday morning, ‘cross the way from the library. Same handprint tech on the bedroom closet, with weapons in there, plus plenty of cash, cashier’s checks, cryptocurrency PINs, a coupla passport and birth certificate blanks, that kinda thing. You need more funds, you let me know, I got plenty.”

Clint is just fidgeting now, puttering around the kitchen, casting sidelong glances at Bucky. 

“Or anything else, actually,” he adds. “Come on over any time, you don’t need an invitation. I get bored easy. We’ll drive past my place on the way back for your car so you know the way.”

“You said —” Bucky doesn’t know where to start. “You said you’d give me what I needed to — to make this feeling go away. You think this is what I need? A safehouse?”

Clint leans up against the breakfast bar, forearms braced to take his weight. His arms strain the seams of his plaid shirt, and Bucky finds his eyes being drawn there, lingering on the solid press of muscle against the soft fabric. Clint takes his time before speaking, squinting a little past Bucky, like he’s having trouble putting it into words.

“Not so much a safehouse, as a safe _place_. A place to stop runnin’, to stop lookin’ over your shoulder all the time and figure out what comes next. And maybe someone you can grow to count on.”

It sounds ridiculous, the Winter Soldier trusting anyone, let alone an Avenger he just met.

 _But you’re not the Winter Soldier,_ a voice in the back of his head says. _And if you didn’t trust him already, you never would have gotten in the truck._

* * *

_blueskyeyes softwarmsungrasssmell gentlehands_

_“Don’t worry, boy. I gotcha.”_

* * *

Bucky startles awake. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, just sat down on the couch for a moment, and then lay back a little to test it out. But it smelled so nice, like rosin and steel, grass and pine — the scent covering him like a warm blanket, and before he knew it he was drifting off to sleep.

He squints at the window. The grey light of dawn is filtering through, washing the color from the room. Christ, he slept through the evening and all through the night. He can’t remember the last time he’d slept so deeply and so peacefully.

He rubs a hand over his hair, as if that will help put his disordered thoughts in line. Clint really seems to have just … left him here, to do as he wishes. There’s something a little disconcerting about that.

When he was the Winter Soldier, he always had a mission. And since the programming cracked, he’s been focused on first surviving, and then staying on the move. Keeping ahead of whoever might be hunting him.

Now … now, he’s not sure _what_ he’s supposed to do.

Yesterday, when Clint dropped him back at his car, he drove it to the city limits, and then to the county line, watching in his rear view mirror for the flash of sirens, the roar of a quinjet. There was nothing. He could have kept driving, and nothing would have stopped him. Nothing except the fact that he didn’t want to go.

He returned to the safehouse, wondering if he’d find Steve waiting there, if he’d find his palmprint deleted from the security system, but everything was just as he had left it.

He read a few chapters of a book, played a record, defrosted something from the freezer and ate it for dinner. He took a long shower, appreciating the hot water. He opened the secure closet in the bedroom and inventoried its contents, checking each weapon carefully. The whole time, he couldn’t silence the voices arguing in his mind.

_You shouldn’t trust him._

_I already do._

* * *

_Come on over any time, you don’t need an invitation_ , Clint had said. _I get bored easy_.

He surely didn’t mean it. He absolutely wouldn’t want Bucky in his space first thing in the morning.

Maybe Bucky can just go take a look, though. Do some reconnaissance. Figure out what Clint really wants, because no one takes in rogue brainwashed assassins out of the goodness of their hearts.

There’s a winding barely-paved road Clint had driven to the farmhouse yesterday when he was showing Bucky the route, but it’s an even shorter walk cutting through the fallow fields. 

It’s barely twenty minutes, the sun still just over the horizon, when Bucky approaches the farmhouse. It’s a graceful two-story frame house with green shutters and a wraparound porch. It starts to look a little beat-up the closer you look, but Clint is obviously working on it — patches of new shingles on the gabled roof, and new windows standing out brightly against the weathered grey clapboard. There’s a sawhorse outside and a pile of lumber, some of the porch boards replaced and still unpainted. 

Bucky is still mostly wondering what he’s doing here when the porch door opens. A shaggy one-eyed dog comes galumphing out, making a beeline for Bucky.

 _I could break its neck_ , Bucky thinks for a fraction of a second, and then he drops to one knee, letting the dog jump up with his front paws on Bucky’s shoulders, licking his face. He scratches behind the dog’s ears, and the dog’s good eye closes in bliss.

“Leave him be, Lucky,” Clint calls out. He’s carrying a bucket toward the chicken coop, not even looking at them.

_Don’t worry, boy. I gotcha._

The words echo in Bucky’s head for a moment and he blinks, not sure where they came from. Some fragment of memory maybe?

Lucky gives him a final lick and then tears off to become involved in the chicken-feeding. He’s probably making the process ten times harder, sending the chickens squawking and doing his best to get underfoot, but Clint is patient and fond as he nudges him aside to fill the feeder and collect the eggs.

They head back to the porch, bucket now holding eggs. Clint stops at the porch door, toeing off his work boots to reveal grey wool socks with a hole in one heel.

“You comin’?” he asks, and then heads inside before Bucky can even think to answer.

He leaves the door open.

* * *

Bucky creeps across the silent foyer, feeling strangely vulnerable in his socked feet. He can hear them in the kitchen — the rattle of kibble into a bowl, the clicking of Lucky’s toenails across the hardwood, water running in the faucet as Clint apparently washes his hands. 

The house smells nice, like oil soap and fresh-baked bread, just a little dusty in the way all old houses smell.

The kitchen faces east and sun is starting to stream in through the windows, splashing golden light across the weathered soapstone countertops.

Clint is pulling bins from a tall pantry cabinet, setting them on the counter.

“I was thinkin’ about makin’ a pie,” he says. “Wanna help?”

Bucky takes a moment to be sure he’s not actually talking to the dog. Who, honestly, might be more helpful in this endeavor. 

“I — I don’t know how —”

“Can you peel an apple?” Clint interrupts mildly.

“I guess?” He can’t remember ever trying, but his knife skills are certainly up to par.

“There you go, then.” Clint pushes a bowl of apples toward him. The bowl is a sunny yellow milkglass, with a white beaded rim. It wouldn’t have been out of place in Bucky’s ma’s kitchen. 

He carefully takes one apple from the bowl, and looks around the kitchen. The knife block is right beside where Clint is standing. He approaches as slowly as he can, pulling out the paring knife and backing away, but Clint doesn’t even seem concerned.

It’s stupid. Ridiculously, recklessly, stupid. And yet, Bucky already knows that Clint is not a stupid man.

He peels apples, and then slices them at Clint’s direction, while Clint does something baffling with flour and butter in between gulps of coffee. He doesn’t seem to be consulting a recipe, or even measuring all that carefully, but Bucky smells cinnamon and nutmeg in the ingredients that have been set out on the counter, and assumes that he knows what he’s doing.

It’s quiet, neither of them seeming to feel the need for conversation. After a while Bucky stops bracing for the interrogation that is clearly not coming, letting his mind settle into the easy task.

They move comfortably around each other in the kitchen, Clint patting Bucky on the back as he squeezes behind him, or nudging him aside with his hip so he can open a drawer on the kitchen island. It’s strange, not to be constantly on guard with someone so near. More than that, to actually feel at ease _because_ of Clint’s effortless amiability. 

Clint’s mixture turns out to be a dough that he chills in the refrigerator while he mixes up more ingredients, and then rolls out to line a pie pan. 

Bucky stirs the apples with lemon juice while Clint slowly adds the other dry ingredients into the bowl, leaning close against Bucky’s side. He smells like coffee, and that fresh-mown grass and pine scent of his, and his scruff shines gold in the sunlight. Bucky blinks, and looks back at the bowl.

Clint empties it all into the waiting pan and carefully lays the second layer of dough across the top.

“Guess you _have_ done this before,” he observes, and Bucky realizes that he’s already pinching the edges where the layers of dough meet, metal and real fingers working together to create a scalloped border.

“I —” he stops, confused. Now that he’s thinking about it, he’s not sure what to do. Clint just takes his time putting the ingredients back, conspicuously not looking.

After a moment Bucky starts again, fingers clumsy and self-conscious now as he tries to purposefully reproduce the movements that had been purely automatic a moment before.

Somewhere, sometime, he’s made a pie. Often enough to know how to do this. He doesn’t know if the idea is comforting or disturbing.

When he’s done, Clint cuts a couple of slits into the top and slides the pie in the oven.

“You ever seen _Dog Cops_?” he asks.

* * *

_oldblood blueskyeyes softwarmsungrasssmell gentlehands_

_“Don’t worry, boy. I gotcha.”_

_mineminemine_

* * *

Bucky wants to hold onto the tendrils of the dream but it’s gone, slipping away the harder he tries to grasp it.

He blinks awake, disoriented. He’s slanted across half of the couch, cheek resting against Clint’s shoulder, nose pressed into the warmth of Clint’s neck. Clint is tapping at his phone, stopping the gentle chiming that woke him up.

“Pie’s ready,” Clint says, voice quietly amused, and Bucky straightens up, startled.

He’d fallen asleep on a veritable _stranger_.

Clint pauses the t.v. and heads to the kitchen and Bucky stands up, on the verge of fleeing. He finds himself with his back to the wall, still frozen in uncertainty, as he hears Clint open the oven and pull out the pie. Lucky clicks into the room and flops down on top of his feet with a contented sigh.

He hears the coffee pot start to brew in the kitchen, the clinking of mugs being pulled from the cabinet.

He’s still there when Clint returns with two mugs of coffee and two plates of pie, vanilla ice cream melting on top.

“Should let it cool more, I know, but I never can resist,” Clint says to the room at large. He sets one plate and fork down on the coffee table, unpauses the television, and starts to dig in to his slice of pie.

Bucky starts to feel foolish the longer he stands there. He just fell asleep, is all. And the ice cream is melting.

He makes his way tentatively back to the couch and sits down. 

The pie crust is still crisp when he cuts it with his fork, the filling golden and warm. He puts a bite in his mouth. Cinnamon and nutmeg and apple bursts across his tongue, and he is suddenly awash in memories. 

_Little Stevie, poking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he peeled the apples, his slender artist’s fingers and scraped knuckles wrapped around the peeler. Bucky’s ma, covering Bucky’s hands with hers. “Like this, ziskayt. Gentle,” she says, showing him how to pinch the crust._

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until a flat tear plops onto the plate. He wipes his face with the back of his hand.

Clint is very deliberately not looking at him. “S’good, huh?” he says.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “It’s good.”

* * *

The next day Bucky is determined to entertain himself. 

It’s not like Clint seemed to resent his presence yesterday — if anything he seemed to welcome it, always suggesting something new every time Bucky made motions to leave.

It was almost dark by the time he made his way back to the granary, his belly full and half of an apple pie carefully wrapped in foil cradled in his arms.

But today — today he needs to fend for himself. It’s not like he’s _unused_ to being alone. After all, he’s been alone since Hydra. It’s Clint’s quiet companionship that’s the anomaly, and it’s not something he should get used to.

He takes another long shower, and makes himself breakfast. He takes another inventory of the closet, in case he missed anything the first time. He reads a few more chapters of the book, and plays a few more records. He makes himself a sandwich for lunch. The flashes of memory are happening more frequently — not the painful ones from the Winter Soldier’s time, but usually ones from before — growing up in Brooklyn, or traipsing across Europe with the Commandos. 

He doesn’t know why, but something about being here does seem to be helping him heal. That restless, aching yearning is almost gone now. He feels settled, somehow, the hypervigilance that has dogged him sloughing away as he casts aside the last vestiges of his programming.

Still, there’s something pulling him in the direction of Clint’s place, some odd compulsion. 

It’s probably just excess energy. He’s sleeping well and eating well for the first time in months. He’ll just take a walk. Or maybe even a run around the perimeter, he thinks, as he heads out, his footsteps quickening. The sun is just setting, fingers of pink extending along the skyline. The air smells crisp and earthy, and he lengthens his stride, feeling the welcome burning of long-unused muscles, the stretching of his tendons.

* * *

_scrabblingsteel trappedtrappedtrapped hungerpainblood_

_“I heard them talking. They’re gonna sell you, and I don’t think you’re gonna like where they aim to send you. I dunno what’s out there for you, but I think anywhere’s better off than here.”_

_Oldblood blueskyeyes softwarmsungrasssmell gentlehands_

_“Don’t worry, boy. I gotcha.”_

_mineminemine_

* * *

Bucky blinks awake to a one-eyed dog breathing humidly an inch from his face.

“Lucky?” he asks in confusion. His voice is hoarse.

He’s in Clint’s living room again, stretched out on his couch. He’s covered by a soft purple afghan, and he’s —

He’s fucking _naked_.

He springs to his feet. He can hear Clint outside, feeding the chickens. Lucky licks his knee.

There’s a pile of neatly folded clothes on the coffee table, next to a steaming cup of coffee, but they’re not Bucky’s clothes.

How did he get here?

He remembers … he remembers taking a walk, that turned into a run. How good it felt, to stretch his muscles, the sense of freedom. And then —

And then _nothing,_ just this feeling of warm contentment that is completely at odds with waking up naked somewhere you don’t remember going.

He pulls on the clothes — sweatpants and a t-shirt. They smell of laundry detergent, but underneath he can still detect the scent of Clint. Bucky has to roll up the waist of the sweatpants a few times to keep the cuffs from dragging.

He stops by the kitchen for a knife, and then creeps out to the porch. His boots aren’t there, but there’s a set of galoshes that he slides his feet into.

Clint is talking to the chickens — gently chiding them for being greedy, complimenting them on the eggs they’ve produced.

He closes the coop, stopping when he sees Bucky on the porch.

“What did you do to me?” Bucky means it to sound angry, accusing, but he can’t keep the confusion from his voice.

Clint takes a careful step forward, the bucket of eggs steady at his side. “Made you coffee?”

Bucky feels his metal hand ball into a fist, the right hand automatically flipping the knife into a palm grip.

Clint’s eyes flick to the knife for just a moment, and then back to Bucky’s eyes. He takes another deliberate step forward.

“You know what I mean,” Bucky rasps. “How did I get here?”

Clint takes another step. “I’m pretty sure you walked. Ran, maybe. You were —” the corner of his mouth quirks up, “— panting.”

“Where are my clothes?”

Clint takes another step forward. He’s only a few paces away now. 

“Dunno. You didn’t have ‘em when you got here.”

Shit. Did he really lose time again? He thought he was getting better. 

“Do you really think I would hurt you?” Clint says, taking another step forward. His voice contains nothing but mild curiosity.

Bucky breathes in deeply. Even in his uncertainty, Clint’s scent is soothing — new-mown grass and pine trees, sunshine and warmth. Clint’s heartbeat is slow, his breathing even. He doesn’t have any bitter tang of nervousness about him, just that comforting scent.

“No,” Bucky finds himself answering before thinking.

Clint takes a final step. He’s right in front of Bucky now, his sky-blue eyes steady and warm. “And do you really think you’re gonna hurt me?”

Bucky blinks down at the knife in his hand. He’d almost forgotten he was holding it.

He shakes his head.

“Good,” Clint says, as if everything is decided. “Then come inside, I’ll make breakfast.”

* * *

Bucky walks home at dusk, belly full and mind befuddled.

He feels like he’s been feeling around the edges of something, just catching glimpses here and there, but unable to put the pieces together.

He could push Clint more. Demand answers. For some reason, though, he’s reluctant to tip the balance of this delicate equilibrium they have. For the first time since breaking free of Hydra he feels safe. Happy, even. And there’s that bone-deep certainty he has that Clint means no harm. He wouldn’t be withholding information just to manipulate or exert power over Bucky, of that at least Bucky is certain. 

A scrap of fabric catches his attention, caught on a low bush. He reaches down and snags it. It’s the t-shirt he had been wearing the day before. It’s not torn, or stained. He keeps walking, and in quick succession finds his boxers, jeans, one sock, and both boots. All of them scattered across the field.

Why the _fuck_ did he apparently strip naked on the way to Clint’s house? And why can’t he remember any of it?

He winces as his head starts up a steady pounding. He gathers the small mound of clothing close to his chest and keeps walking.

* * *

_scrabblingsteel trappedtrappedtrapped hungerpainblood_

_softsteps kindboy_

_“I heard them talking. They’re gonna sell you, and I don’t think you’re gonna like where they aim to send you. I dunno what’s out there for you, but I think anywhere’s better off than here.”_

_Oldblood blueskyeyes softwarmsungrasssmell gentlehands_

_“Don’t worry, boy. I gotcha.”_

_mineminemine_

* * *

He goes to sleep in his own bed and is almost not surprised to wake up again on Clint’s couch. 

“Seriously?” he asks Lucky, who licks him on the nose.

There are clothes left out for him again, and he pulls them on. It’s not even dawn yet, grey light filtering in through the windows. 

He follows the scent of coffee.

Clint is standing in the kitchen, his hair sticking up in all directions like a haystack, wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants that are hanging perilously low around his hipbones. He’s watching the coffeepot brew, as if he can will it to go faster.

His torso is littered with scars, most of them long-healed. There’s puncture wounds in each shoulder, the jagged edge of a serrated knife injury across the right side of his ribcage, and the messy starburst of a bullet exit wound visible in his right lower back as he leans forward to retrieve the coffeepot. He leans against the counter and takes a long slurp right from the spout, and the motion makes his pajama pants sag a little lower, revealing the edge of what looks like an elongated crescent of puncture marks on his left hip.

Clint lowers the coffee pot, catching sight of Bucky.

“You’re up,” he observes in a gravelly voice, hitching his pajama pants up higher. “Want some coffee? I could … uh … make a new pot,” he says, blinking down in confusion at the coffeepot he’s still holding in his hand.

“No, I’m good.” Bucky can’t stop staring at where the marks — where the _teeth_ marks — were. He wants to touch them. He wants — this is insane, he knows it — but he wants to set his _own_ teeth there.

He finds himself moving closer, as if he just needs to be in Clint’s orbit. He reaches past Clint to grab the kettle, filling it with water and setting it to boil.

Clint is an attractive man, Bucky recognized that from the start, even if he pretended it didn’t affect him at the time. He hasn’t thought too much about anyone that way since Hydra, too focused on survival, but he remembers enough to know that he enjoyed men just as much as women before Hydra. And he knows that he finds Clint’s steady presence soothing, and enjoys his easy companionship. But _this_ — this fierce sense of possession he feels when he thinks about someone or something else getting their teeth in Clint — it seems inexplicable.

 _Mine_ , he thinks, and the thought seems strangely familiar.

He thinks it over as the kettle comes to a boil. He pours the boiling water into a mug with a teabag and sits at the breakfast bar.

“You said you never met _Bucky Barnes_ ,” he finally starts. “Did — did you meet the Winter Soldier?” It doesn’t feel quite right when he says it, but he doesn’t know what else to think.

Clint hums thoughtfully. “I dunno if I could really say for sure.” He drums his fingers on the counter for a minute, as if formulating his thoughts. “The guy who keeps showing up on my porch in the middle of the night, though — I’ve definitely met _him_ before.”

Bucky freezes, the mug halfway to the counter. “Are you — are you saying there’s someone _else?”_ The thought is terrifying.

“Not — shit, I’m saying this all wrong.” Clint rubs the back of his neck in frustration. “And I’m not sure if I should even be sayin’ it at all. I’m makin’ this up as I go along, and probably doing a real bad job of it.”

He reaches out, grasping Bucky’s hand. It’s an oddly intimate gesture but Bucky finds it instantly soothing, some of the fear receding so he can focus on Clint’s words.

“Let’s call it … a state of mind. Long ago, I met you when you were in that state of mind, and I helped you out. And I think on some level you remember that, and that’s why you trust me now.”

Bucky closes his eyes, focusing on the sunshine-and-grass scent of Clint, on the feel of his warm, callused fingers against Bucky’s palm. He’s met Clint before, and doesn’t remember it. Where and when? And why the hell won’t Clint just say?

 _Do you even know what you are?_ Clint had asked. Was that the answer — some sort of multiple personality?

 _When you know what questions to ask, I’ll give you all the answers you want._ Bucky feels like he’s getting closer, but still not asking the right question.

He tries another tack. “Was it really a coincidence — me ending up here?”

Clint rubs an absent-minded circle on Bucky’s palm with his thumb. “I’ve wondered the same thing. My friend — she says she could find me, wherever I am. But, she could just be messing with me. She’s kind of like that. Keeps her secrets close.”

“I wasn’t — I wasn’t looking for anything. I was just running.”

“And yet — Waverly is pretty far from anyplace useful. Not far off the grid enough to be away from security cameras, not big enough to have easy access to an airport. It’s — it’s not what the Winter Soldier would have chosen. And I don’t see any reason why Bucky Barnes would come here.”

Bucky can feel himself frowning. He’s getting a headache again. The idea that something — some _instinct_ — has been making decisions for him is deeply unsettling. It sounds a little too much like programming to him, like some hidden subroutine designed to get him captured. And yet, at the same time something about it is totally incongruent. Hydra programming felt like pure cold logic, the exact opposite of instinct. And if Bucky is sure of anything right now, he’s sure that Clint means him no harm.

Clint gives his shoulder a squeeze, the gentle touch leaching some of the tension out of Bucky's spine. “Maybe that’s enough for today. How do you feel about pancakes?”

* * *

They sit in front of the t.v. with a stack of pancakes and _Dog Cops_. Detective Fluffernutter and Sergeant Whiskers are investigating a robbery when Bucky finally works up the courage to ask something he’s been wondering for awhile.

“How come you’re here? I mean, not in New York, with the rest of the Avengers?”

Clint deliberately swallows his bite of pancake, and takes a slow sip of coffee. “You heard about the Battle of New York?”

“Yeah. I mean, I read about it, last couple of months. Catching up on things.”

Clint’s staring straight ahead at the t.v. “The guy who started it.” He takes a deep breath. _“Loki._ ” He spits the word out as if it hurts. “He had somethin’ that let him get inside my head. Made me do things. Kill my own people. My friend — the one you know about — she got me out of it, but I was pretty fucked up after. Tried to stay and keep doing the hero thing, but my head wasn’t in the game, an’ I was makin’ it dangerous for everybody. Decided to take some time off.”

“Oh.” Bucky feels bad for asking, now. And even worse that there’s a tiny part of him that’s relieved, to find out that there’s someone else who knows what it’s like.

He thinks about Clint’s quiet resignation when he thought the Winter Soldier was here to kill him. All the times Clint has seemed to lack self-preservation — how much of it was him trusting Bucky, and how much of it was him punishing himself?

It makes something hurt, deep in his chest, the idea of Clint resigned to his own death. Maybe even _welcoming_ it. 

He hesitates, but then reaches out, grasping Clint’s hand. It always helps him when Clint does that. Maybe it’ll work the other way.

And it does. Clint’s shoulders lose some of their hunch. He squeezes back, giving Bucky a smile that’s only a little wobbly at the edges.

And if by the end of season one Bucky is leaning back against Clint’s side, then that’s nobody’s business but theirs.

* * *

_scrabblingsteel trappedtrappedtrapped hungerpainblood_

_softsteps kindboy peanutbutterjelly hereyoutakeitimnothungry_

_“I heard them talking. They’re gonna sell you, and I don’t think you’re gonna like where they aim to send you. I dunno what’s out there for you, but I think anywhere’s better off than here.”_

_oldblood blueskyeyes softwarmsungrasssmell gentlehands_

_“Don’t worry, boy. I gotcha.”_

_nimblefingers opencagerun badmencoming_

_warmsoftskin markmine bitesoft_

_findlater runfree_

_mineminemine_

* * *

“Bucky?”

Bucky startles awake.

Clint is leaning over him, brow furrowed with concern.

“Hey, sorry ta wake you, it just seemed like —”

Clint’s arm is braced on the back of the couch, shirt pulling up at his hip, and Bucky can’t help himself.

He reaches out, fingertips pressing over the bite mark, and it’s like a shock goes through them both.

“Holy shit,” Clint says, stumbling back, almost tripping over the coffee table.

They stare wide-eyed at each other for a minute.

“That’s … holy _shit,”_ Clint says again.

“I — I did that?” Bucky says. He sits up, squeezing back into the corner of the couch, trying to get his bearings, the images from the dream — from the _memory_ — vivid in his head. “I _hurt_ you?”

“Hey, no,” Clint perches tentatively on the other side of the couch. “I mean — I won’t lie, it was a little scary at the time, but I don’t think you meant to hurt me. Never quite knew _what_ it meant, honestly, until my friend told me.”

“What did she say?”

“She said …” Clint rubs the back of his neck, a pink flush spreading up to his cheeks. “She said it meant you liked me. That you wanted to … to mark me as yours.”

_mineminemine_

“You were just a kid,” Bucky says despairingly. He can see it now, Clint’s same sky-blue eyes big in a too-thin face, smelling of bruises both old and new, sharing his meager food with the wolf even while his scent burned with the acrid tang of hunger.

Clint snorts. “I was sixteen, an’ my brother ‘n I had been on our own for six years by then. I didn’t feel like a kid, but looking back now I sure didn’t know what the hell I was doing, messing with a —” Clint cuts himself off, giving Bucky a sideways glance.

“A wild animal,” Bucky finishes for him. 

Clint shrugs. “I didn’t know werewolves existed back then. Hell, there’s a lot of things in this world I didn’t know existed back then.”

“But you helped me anyway,” Bucky said. “Gave me food, and —” _Clint’s nimble fingers, picking open the cage’s padlock with a paperclip_ “— set me free.”

“I didn’t understand what Trick wanted with you,” Clint says, ”but whatever it was, it wasn’t right. You — what they were doing to you was wrong.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? What I was?”

“Nat —” 

Bucky’s head spikes with pain, and whatever involuntary sound he makes stops Clint’s words, but it doesn’t matter.

“Nataliya Romanova,” Bucky says. He remembers her now, bits and pieces. A vicious fighter, dressed up like a porcelain doll, scented with jasmine perfume. Rosin to help her dancing slippers grip, and a stiletto hidden in the boning of her petticoat to slide between the cervical vertebrae of her mark.

Clint nods. “She told me once, how the Red Room made her this way. Some people are born to it, I guess, but not her, and I’m guessing not you either, unless Cap kept one hell of a secret. Did kinda wonder who picked the name Howling Commandos, though,” Clint says with a wry twist of his lips.

“No,” Bucky says. “I don’t think — I wasn’t like this. Before.”

“Anyway, Nat said that they wanted her to have the strengths — the heightened senses, and the speed, and the rest of it. But they never wanted her to shift. Punished her when she did, made her hate that part of herself, for the longest time. Tried to make her forget it even existed.”

“You think that’s what Hydra did to me?”

“I thought,” Clint says carefully, “that maybe it’d be better if you remembered when you were ready.”

Lucky has been pressing up against Bucky’s calves, whining, and Bucky gives him a few pats to settle him.

It still doesn’t seem real, but he remembers it all the same. The world brighter and infinitely rich with scents. The pure emotion of it — no logic and doubts, only primal certainty.

_mineminemine_

“I really just ... turn into a wolf?”

“Seems like. Show up howlin’ on my porch until I let you in. Snuggle on the couch for a while, and then you fall asleep.”

It feels like the memories are there, just at the edge of Bucky’s consciousness, as long as he doesn’t look at them straight on. Clint’s voice, warm and amused, telling him to just come in already. The soft animal heat of him curled around Bucky. The soothing scent of him, sun and grass and pine, settling something deep inside Bucky that has been yearning for so long he hardly even recognized the ache was there until it was gone.

Bucky looks down to where his metal fingers are gripping the edge of the sofa cushion, probably too tightly. He consciously relaxes them a little.

“What happens to the arm?” he asks.

Clint huffs a soft laugh. “Hell if I know. You have all four paws as a wolf.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah.”

* * *

Clint was telling the truth — now that Bucky knows what questions to ask, Clint answers them all, as best as he’s able. Some of it is based on what he’s learned from Nat, but other parts he’s apparently picked up through research over the years.

“I’m not that great a reader,” Clint says abashedly. “Never got further’n elementary school, and didn’t even go there half the time. But I picked up books where I could find ‘em, and puzzled them out best I could. Saved ‘em all too, for … for if I ever needed ‘em again.”

They talk well into the evening, slowly gravitating closer and closer. By the time Bucky starts to run out of questions they have finished dinner and are sprawled out on the couch together, Clint lying in the vee of Bucky’s legs, head pressed to his chest. He’s too tall for it, really, but it allows Bucky to keep the palm of his real hand pressed to the bite on Clint’s hip, the shock of it now just a gentle warmth that seems to soothe them both.

Now that Bucky knows he can’t seem to get enough of the physical contact with Clint, and Clint seems to seek it out equally fervently. Bucky thinks of that first day in the diner, how the warm press of Clint’s palm against his cheek kept the panic at bay. Wonders if that was maybe the moment he knew, deep down inside.

“Did you know it was me? In the diner, I mean?,” he asks.

Clint snorts. “You mean after I decided you weren’t there to kill me?” He shakes his head, enough so Bucky can feel the prickle of his scruff even through his t-shirt. “I guessed you were a ‘wolf — you were scenting things, like Nat does. And I wondered. But I didn’t know for sure until I saw you like that again, on my front porch.”

Clint’s hand has snuck under Bucky’s shirt too, fingers pressed against his ribs, as if he needs as much skin-to-skin contact as he can get. “I always wondered,” he adds. “Once Nat told me what the bite meant. Wondered what happened to you, and if it really — if you really might find me someday. It — it helped sometimes.” Clint pulls in a deep, ragged breath. “When I was low, or lonely. Just knowin’ there was someone out there who wanted to keep me. Someone worth stickin’ around for.”

Bucky feels a growl start at the back of his throat. All the idiots in this world who had Clint and didn’t value him. Didn’t see how amazing and brave and _good_ he was. Who let him feel, even for a single instant, that he was unwanted.

Bucky squeezes Clint tighter, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly to calm himself. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That it took so long. And you were probably hoping for — well, for someone better.”

Clint lifts his head, his blue eyes startled. “Better? Are you kidding me?” He reaches up, tracing Bucky’s hair back from his face, and his expression holds nothing but soft wonder. “You’re better than anyone I could have imagined. Everything that’s happened to you, and you’re still so —” He stops, swallowing thickly. “I didn’t think I could get this lucky. It’s like … like a miracle. Like magic.”

Magic. Bucky presses his palm against the bite again, and feels an answering jolt of warmth. All the things in this world that he never knew existed. Aliens, and robots, and witches, and Norse gods come to life. And now there’s this … _werewolves_ , and he _is_ one. And then there’s Clint. The word Bucky feels deep in his heart, steadfast and certain, but is shy to say even in his own mind. Someone who understands him, who is good and kind and patient. Someone who needs Bucky just as much as Bucky needs him. Someone not perfect — damaged and broken in some of the same ways that Bucky is — but perfect for _him_. _Mate_.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He wraps his fingers tight around the bite and presses a kiss to the top of Clint’s head, breathing him in. “Magic.”


End file.
